Even the Flawed Countries Are Worth Our Help

During my visit to Africa this month, I stressed America’s desire to begin a new chapter in relations with that continent. For a century or more, outsiders have either been telling Africans what to do or manipulating African loyalties for geopolitical advantage. We have a chance now--which we should seize--to build a new era based on the promise of a rapidly changing Africa and a new spirit of partnership and respect.

During my visit, I announced an initiative to promote justice and the rule of law in the strategic, strife-torn Great Lakes region. Here, countries are struggling against long odds to restore stability and lay the groundwork for democracy and sustained economic growth. The message I conveyed on behalf of President Clinton was that the U.S. wants these countries to succeed and that we are prepared to help them do so.

There are some who would criticize any effort to work with leaders in the Great Lakes because those leaders are, at best, imperfect democrats. But if we want to advance the goals of human rights, prosperity, freedom and peace, we cannot sit on the sidelines awaiting the arrival of fully formed democracies.

Engagement is not endorsement. In the three Great Lakes countries that I visited--Uganda, Rwanda and Congo--I emphasized the importance the U.S. attaches to open political systems, open markets, civil liberties and human rights.

But I also conveyed the message that the United States is not blind to the history of the region, which has been marred by devastating wars, foreign exploitation, internal division and poverty or to the fact that mistakes there may lead to massive bloodshed and civil war.

The government of Rwanda may be faulted for not succeeding in healing ethnic divisions or preparing for majority rule and for abuses committed against civilians during counterinsurgency operations. And indeed, these issues featured prominently in my discussions in Kigali.

But an even more urgent cause for international outrage and response should be the effort by Hutu extremists to continue the genocide against Tutsis and Hutu moderates that they initiated in 1994 and that left up to one million dead. The most dramatic recent outrage was a Dec. 10 attack on a Congolese Tutsi refugee camp in Rwanda in which hundreds of innocent people, including many children, were butchered.

If stability and reconciliation are to take root in Rwanda, the government must receive help in ensuring security for all its people and in cutting off the pipeline of external arms and support to Hutu extremists.

Rwanda’s neighbor, the Democratic Republic of Congo, endured decades of kleptocratic misrule under former President Mobutu, whose excesses were--for Cold War reasons--often overlooked and sometimes underwritten by the West.

The new government, headed by Laurent Kabila, inherited a country that was divided, demoralized and broke. But Congo is a land of vast resources and great human and economic potential. It includes a number of leaders who opposed Mobutuism at great risk to themselves and whose cooperation the new government needs if it is to build a stable society.

Unfortunately, President Kabila has demonstrated his inexperience and shown little inclination to embrace other political players.

U.S. engagement in Congo is not intended to support any particular leader. But it recognizes the dangers for the entire region if this huge country were to disintegrate into factional violence. And it demonstrates American concern for the Congolese people, who have suffered much and who need help in creating a future better than their past.

In Uganda, President Museveni has placed a high priority on economic reform and political stability. Threats to his regime include the Lord’s Resistance Army, which specializes in the kidnapping, rape, enslavement and killing of children.

The United States believes that Uganda should move steadily in the direction of multiparty democracy. We have made this point repeatedly. We do not back all of the Museveni’s government’s policies. But we do respect the remarkable progress that has been made and we are encouraging Uganda’s participation in efforts at regional economic and security cooperation.

The new leaders of Central Africa have their faults. But the international community can be faulted, as well, for being far quicker to criticize than to demonstrate an understanding of the depth of the region’s problems--and its potential--and to deliver timely and substantive help.

In the past, U.S. relations with African nations have been distorted by the prisms of East-West and North-South divisions. We have a chance now to establish more mature relationships, characterized by cooperation and dedicated to seizing opportunities and solving problems.

In so doing, we will never retreat from our support for democratic principles and universal standards of human rights. But neither will we be content to issue moralizing judgments from afar.